Bullets beat virus to it

Tuesday 1st December 2020

The Mahara Prison riot has left eight inmates dead and more than 70 others injured. Some of them are in a very serious condition, we are told. Trouble started when about 183 inmates tested positive for COVID-19 and had to be taken to treatment centres, on Sunday. Others also wanted to be removed from the virus-ridden jail, and turned aggressive when their demand was not met. The STF was called in to restore order and prevent a mass breakout.

The knee-jerk reaction of the government was to blame the prison riot on an invisible hand. State Minister of Prison Reforms and Prisoners’ Rehabilitation, Sudarshini Fernandopulle, speaking in Parliament, yesterday, said a hidden hand had engineered Sunday’s clashes. Minister Wimal Weerawansa said a drug dealer, transferred to the Mahara Prison from Welikada, had distributed narcotics among inmates and instigated violence. Politicians are known to ‘see more devils than vast hell can hold’.

The incumbent government is dogged by a bad reputation anent prisons owing to the 2012 Welikade Prison riot, where 27 persons were killed under a previous Rajapaksa government. Now, the current administration has another huge problem to contend with on the human rights front. Sunday’s incidents are bound be taken up in Geneva, come the next UNHRC session.

However, there’s no gainsaying that some underworld elements are bent on inciting violence in prisons. Their sinister plans must be defeated to make the correctional facilities safe, but a perquisite for doing so is to deny the troublemakers among prisoners opportunities to instigate others to riot. The current surge in COVID-19 infections is fraught with the danger of causing panic in other prisons as well. A tense situation is said to be prevailing in the old Bogambara Prison, where prisoners are brought to undergo quarantine. Protests have been reported from there, and several inmates have already made abortive escape bids. Prisoners were protesting at the Negombo jail at the time of going to press.

Sunday’s prison riot could have been averted if precautions had been taken to prevent the spread of panic among prisoners and remandees. The Mahara Prison, packed to the rafters, with so many COVID-19 infections, was disaster waiting to happen. During the first wave of infections, which the government succeeded in tackling effectively, we argued in this space that prisoners were more vulnerable than others, given the appalling conditions of the Sri Lankan jails. We pointed out that even in the US with much better prisons than Sri Lanka’s there was a high incidence of COVID-19 among the prison population, and prisoners were protesting.

Everybody knew our prisons were ticking time bombs, but, unfortunately, nobody did anything about it. The number of infections among prisoners has crossed 1,100. Prisoners’ concerns about their safety should be appreciated, and urgent action taken to ensure that they are not exposed to the virus.

The Mahara Prison inmates, however, were not blameless; they resorted to violence, carried out arson attacks and attempted a mass breakout. The trail of destruction they have left behind alone is incriminating evidence against them. They cannot claim their fear of COVID-19 in extenuation of what they have done. But it is not yet known whether the force the Prison guards and the police used was proportional to the threat they faced, or whether there were excesses on their part. The government has appointed a committee to investigate Sunday’s riot. The Opposition has demanded that the incidents be probed by a group of independent investigators; one cannot but agree with it.

It is incumbent upon the government to ensure that the Mahara Prison clashes will be thoroughly investigated, the findings of the probe committee made public and justice served while aggressive testing is conducted in all prisons and infected inmates are removed for treatment forthwith. That is the only way to defuse tension in prisons and avert another disaster.